Random access: all musical knowledge available at all times.

Think back to those heady days of your undergraduate or graduate music education. No doubt you were excited about your musical studies and soaked up as much knowledge possible. New information was available everywhere you turned: your instrumental or vocal lessons, your classes, rehearsals, concerts and the library. Also, all of this was available within a small geographical area--probably just a short walk from your dorm.

When you graduated and left the ivory tower, you may have realized your education did not stop, but the manner ill which you accessed information changed. In most cases, more effort was involved. The library was no longer a short walk away You didn't have a potpourri of free concerts to attend every month. And, if you continued your vocal or instrumental lessons, you had to travel to your instructor and pay market rates for your lessons.

The Internet Changes Everything

If you have missed the easy access to information you had in college, I have good news for you. Right now--today--you have nearly instant access to an unprecedented amount of musical information--most of it free. In the coming years, you will likely have instant access to virtually all human information, musical and otherwise--some of it free, some of it not.

Given these new circumstances, the crucial questions are:

1. Do you have compelling reasons to acquire information from the Internet?

2. Do you have the tools needed to access information on the Internet?

3. Do you know how to use these tools?

4. When you find information on the Internet, do you know how to evaluate it, discard the junk and use the "good stuff"?

Why Use the Internet?

Let me give you an example of the many ways in which the Internet assisted me on a personal music research project.

During my percussionist son's senior year in high school, I encouraged him to enter his orchestra's concerto competition. The problem was figuring out what a young timpanist could play for a concerto. We had never heard of any timpani concerti.

A professional timpanist pointed us to a 20th-century piece and we ordered a CD recording from a traditional "record store." The piece turned out to be too difficult, but the CD included a wonderful little timpani concerto (requiring eight drams) from the 1780s, allegedly written by Johann Wilhelm Hertel. There was just one problem: it was unpublished.

By doing a series of Internet searches, we found websites of two German orchestras that listed the piece as one of the pieces they had performed in the past 10 years. These websites included contact information, so we e-mailed an inquiry to both orchestras. One orchestra responded that it did not have the piece and did not recall where it got the music. The other orchestra responded that it did not have the music either, but provided us the name, address and phone number of an elder German timpanist who had a score.

We were warned that the German timpanist was somewhat forgetful and hard to reach. Regrettably our attempts to contact him did not yield results. However, since we knew all original manuscript existed somewhere, we were now hot on the trail. I called a fellow music major from my college days who had subsequently obtained a degree in music library science. "How do you locate manuscripts for unpublished scores?" I asked him.

"Don't you remember the music history courses that taught you how to use the RISM directory?"

"No," I replied. "I avoided those courses."

Well, it turned out there was a source for this sort of information, and my son and I could probably travel to a college music library somewhere and continue our research. On a hunch, though, I did a quick Internet search for RISM--Repertoire International des Sources Musicales--and discovered the entire database is available online to subscribers. Although the fees were steep, reflecting the fact that the subscribers are generally institutions, I noted one could acquire a free, short-term trial membership.

We signed up online, and in minutes we located a small library in the former East Germany that had the original musical score. Next, we sent an e-mail inquiry and within a day or so we had a reply. All we had to do was fill out a form, send a check for approximately 27 euros and a copy of the score would be ours.

One wrinkle in all of this was that the librarian preferred to answer our English e-mails in German. However, with the assistance of friends and computer tools for automatically translating one language to another, we had no trouble getting what we needed.

There were several outcomes from this use of the Internet:

* We obtained a copy of the original hand-written manuscript from which we made a conductor's score and parts using Finale.

* We discovered the piece was probably not written by Hertel but more likely by Johann Fischer.

* Having discovered another possible composer of this work, we were able to revise our Internet searches and acquire even more information about this composition.

* My son, with a lot of practice, won the opportunity to perform the piece with his orchestra.

During the course of this project, all our activities took place from the comfort of our home--with the exception of moving eight timpani on a weekly basis to and from the rehearsal and performance venues.

My example of Internet use may not parallel your Internet needs, but I think this example makes the basic point: the Internet is a multifaceted resource that can provide access to information and products in ways hard to imagine until you start to dig in and see what it can do for you.

What Do You Need?

There are two technology components to using the Internet: your computer and its Internet connection. Ideally, your computer should be reasonably modern and the Internet connection should be fast (for example, what is technically referred to as broadband, such as cable modem, DSL or satellite). The broadband connection is especially important because it enhances the efficiency and speed at which you access the Internet; a dial-up connection may actually hinder your efforts.

It is very helpful to have a reasonably modern computer. For example, let's say you find an Internet website with a video example of a particular teaching technique. If you have a modern computer and fast Internet connection, you can probably view the video immediately without any trouble.

Without broadband, you will have to download the video clip, which will take a long time. Then, if you have an old computer, you may be faced with the fact the clip is in a format your computer will not support. You may be able to acquire the right program to play it, but now the whole matter of watching this video clip has become a hassle.

Do You Know How to Use Your Computer's Tools?

The Internet is similar to the wild, wild west. Unlike a library that is logically laid out, containing neatly cataloged information, and equipped with friendly librarians who are eager to help you find whatever you want, the Internet may seem to have very little structure.

To make effective use of the Internet, you inevitably need to use a search engine, such as Google (www.google.com). These search engines do the cataloging for you.

Search engines have their own unique ways of probing the Internet and examining publicly available web pages. What they learn about each page includes:

* The address of the page

* The content of the page

* The page-author's description about the content of the page (a description you normally do not see on the page itself)

In a way, these search results are similar to what you used to get from a library's card catalog: namely, the location of the item and a brief description. A search engine contains actual knowledge about the page's contents, something a card catalog doesn't have.

One needs to understand the nature of Internet searching and combine that knowledge with previously acquired research skills.

What Do You Do With All of This Information?

It also is easy to be misled by things you find on the Internet. Internet content may not necessarily be filtered by a knowledgeable source. However, this problem is not unique to the Internet.

I recall a crazy situation years ago. A full-time, tenured professor managed to get an article accepted in a well-known publication that is read by piano teachers. This particular professor wrote about Debussy's use of modal scales in a particular piano piece. He completely misunderstood the concept of key and how to determine what modal scale was actually in use in any passage of the music. This misleading article made it into print, and I have no doubt many readers were mislead by it.

Regardless as to where you get your information, you must be discriminating in your evaluation of it. The Internet provides us with nearly all-available information and it provides us with all possible misinformation.

Caveat Emptor!

BONUS BYTE

For more tips about maximizing your Internet searches go to http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/ basics.html.

George F. Litterst is a nationally known music educator, clinician, author, performer and music software developer He is co-developer of the intelligent accompaniment software program Home Concert Xtreme from TimeWarp Technologies.